This Week in Australian Cinemas

Another cold week in the cinemas. I'm not liking this trend at all


24: The MovieThe Sentinel, 2006, dir. Johnson
What. The. Fuck. I... I... *sigh* Keifer Sutherland, what the fuck is wrong you you?!?!? Let's move along quickly, shall we?

Footy Legends, 2006, dir. Do
This is the sort of movie Australia doesn't make very often. A mere crowd pleaser. Usually out movies are arty comedies, depressing dramas or what have you, but this appears to be a crowd-pleasing "feel good" movie. It's directed by Khao Do whose breakthrough The Finished People was admirable, but ultimately quite frustrating. Now he's moved in such a different direction I'm surprised he didn't give himself whip lash. Anh Do stars as a down-on-his-luck type who is being threatened with having his young sister taken away from him (for some reason) so he... starts up a rugby league team? I'm sure the train-of-thought it gone into with more detail in the actual film. I'd be much more interested in seeing this if, to be honest, it wasn't rugby league. I sort've hate that sport and can't understand how anybody in their right minds likes it. But they do, for some reason. But, what I do know is that this film has Claudia Karvan in it and that is almost enough to get me into the cinema. She's not on the big screen nearly enough (last time was as the feiry femme fatale of the underappreciated Risk). Also stars Angus Sampson, Lisa Saggers, Peter Phelps and that dude from "The NRL Footy Show". Ya know... the guy who plays Reg Reagen?

Confetti, 2006, dir. Isitt
Well, this is a bizarre little concoction isn't it? A mockumentary based around a fictional magazine (called Confetti) running a competition to find the couple wanting to put on the strangest wedding? There are three couples in the final, one wants a nudist wedding, another with a tennis theme and another in the style of an old-style musical film. There is also two camp wedding planners as well as the magazine staff. They're all running around improvising everything. It actually looked mildly amusing in a "I'll see that on DVD" sorta way. My friend who saw the trailer at Jindabyne with me didn't agree. The only cast member of any note in it is Martin Freeman.

Hoodwinked!, 2005, dir. Edwards & Edwards
Fact - the only bit in the entire trailer that gets a laugh out of me, my friends, and the entire cinema (on both times we've seen this trailer at a movie) is at the very end when the two turtles go "Run!" and then slooowly mooove awaaaay. It's very funny. The rest of the trailer is not. And it looks so poorly animated, too.

49 Up, 2005, dir. Apted
The 7 Up series of films always get theatrical releases in Australia. I admit to never having seen anyway, although I can see the "Big Brother"-ish fascination with the series. This edition looks at how the participants and the filmmakers themselves have managed their way through the series. Or... something like that. This series is like crack to some people!

BOX-OFFICE
1. You, Me & Dupree (1)
2. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (4)
3. The Lake House (1)
4. Jindabyne (2)
5. My Super Ex-Girlfriend (2)
6. Superman Returns (5)
7. Little Man (3)
8. Over the Hedge (6)
9. 19 Blocks (2)
10. Click (6)

You, Me & Dupree makes it to #1 with a gross of $2.5mil and a great average of $10,151. The reason for this? Well, the only reason is the visit by stars Owen Wilson and Kate Hudson. While an American star visiting Australia to pimp a movie isn't uncommon, it usually means the movie is shit and well, it seemed like it was here too. But that didn't stop people from going. It beat the fourth weekend of Pirates by half a million, so it was a decisive win.

The Lake House is the other opener this week and it made $1.5mil with a nice and dandy average of $7,398. I sort've wish I could minipulate time and go back to when I hadn't seen this horrible viewer-unfriendly movie. Jindabyne, Ray Lawrence's third film in 25 years, falls a scant 27% after it's impressive debut. It didn't have a the great hold that Lantana did 5 years ago, but with just under $2mil in the bank it should still go far.

The word-of-mouth caught up with My Super Ex-Girlfriend after it's great debut last week lead to a 63% fall to #5 from $2. Ouch. Superman Returns isn't going to reach $15mil which is quite possibly the biggest disaster of the year. It has $380,000 in it's fifth week and only a gross of $13,356,354 so this will be a major red mark. MAJOR. This is even more embarassing than Mission Impossible III. The next four spots are all held by boring titles that have been around for longer than they deserve, although Over the Hedge is good apparently. Little Man, Over the Hedge, 16 Blocks and Click all had hilariously bad drops of 58%, 68%, 59% and 62% respectively. It crossed $16mil and could still overtake Cars (which fell an even worse 72%), which is at #12 with $17.5mil.

Ten Canoes drops out of the Top 10 for the first time, tumbling 29% as Palace really start to screw around with it. Seriously, they need to get this movie out there. What are they thinking? It has just over $2mil at this point.

Other new entries were The Libertine at #16 with a pathetic $65,646 and an average of $1,601. Omkara got $34,080 ($4,869 average), Sophie Scholl got #20,178 ($2,884 average) and The Devil & Daniel Johnston got $9,400 ($3,133 average). All were unranked.

What a boring box-office!